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Text of the page (random words):
i know them and i know us a little better than i did today is our anniversary we ve been married seventeen years together closer to twenty along the way she s put up with a lot from this clumsy struggling priest she s amazing i am ordained in a once celibate tradition i m someone with responsibilities to teachers and teachings and a community all of which pull me in a hundred directions and i know i fail in an equal number of ways including sometimes failing her yet if i weren t married to tracy who teaches me so much i know i would fail in a thousand more that s part of what i hold there is no this without that i hope some of the readers of this blog might enjoy tracy s book for the zen yes but also just for the honesty of it and for the language if you do i hope you ll let me know share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 2 comments posted in uncategorized do nothing at all zazen yōjinki part 2 jul 25 this is the second part of a 6 part series on keizan s zazen yōjinki notes on what to be aware of in zazen you can click here for part 1 let s continue drop through this bodymind bodymind is an important word and you will be far beyond such forms as sitting or lying down beyond considerations of good or bad transcend any divisions between usual people and sages pass beyond the boundary between sentient beings and buddha on the surface this sounds really big but if we look more closely at what keizan is doing we see he has keywords and the keywords are what we need to look at drop through this bodymind bodymind is a key word and you will be far beyond such forms as sitting or lying down he s also drawing contrasts beyond considerations of good or bad transcend any divisions between usual people and sages but when he does this he s saying there s this and this it s not this or this and then he sets up another one and he says how about this and this it s not that or that he keeps talking about being between pass beyond the boundary between sentient beings and buddha if we imagine that there are sentient beings then we imagine that there are buddhas and if we think it through we might imagine that there s a kind of a spot in the middle that there s someone who s halfway here and halfway there don t imagine he says that this is either or and don t imagine that this is a spectrum any two things between which you might get stuck you have to drop it it s not a progression it s not win lose it s something else and then he says putting aside all concerns shed all attachments do nothing at all don t fabricate any things with the six senses do nothing at all there s a perception of zazen even by people who do zazen that zazen is a kind of doing nothing there s another perception of zazen which i ve mentioned a number of times before maybe zazen isn t doing nothing but still somehow it s outside of the realm of cause and effect this is a very popular idea in this view when you re sitting in zazen you re not creating any karma you re beyond morality you re beyond questions of consequences you re kind of frozen in space and time untouched and untouching i ve heard this many times from many teachers however as i ve said before it s ridiculous that is not what keizan is talking about though if we re not careful we might read that into it do nothing at all can sound like we re separating ourselves somehow or we re putting ourselves in a bubble for now let s read do nothing at all as simply don t fabricate in our activities in our lives in our practice our default is to either push or pull in everything we do we push or we pull we re always pushing and pulling last week i said we always contract it s the same there s something that makes us tight when you push you re tight when you pull you re tight in zazen if something comes into your mind and you think oh this is not zazen i should not be thinking about this you push even if your body looks serene you re contracting you re trying to hold something back and then when that idea is replaced by something that s just too good to ignore too juicy either because it s a memory that you kind of like to torture yourself with or because it s a fantasy that just has its own appeal then you start to pull and you know what it is to pull you know what it is to hold onto a rope and to try to pull something towards yourself you hold on the effect is the same in the body in the mind it s the same whether it s attachment or aversion you re moving this way or you re moving this way and your body is dealing with that and your mind is dealing with that you re here in relationship to something what keizan is talking about over and over and over again is the idea that there s a space that s neither you don t have to push or pull that sounds obvious but there are very few moments in an ordinary life when we don t do one or the other so we re invited to consider what is it to do neither what is it to be here not just in this posture but in this moment neither grasping nor pushing away in kinhin depending on how much you pay attention to your feet you may be aware of your center of gravity and when we re balanced when we say that we ve found our center of gravity that s a moment when we re neither pushing nor pulling now sometimes when you do kinhin it s very forced it s nobody s fault it s just because that s how it feels that day and so you lift your foot and the feeling is now i m going up and now i m going forward and now i m down and it has a kind of robotic feeling you re really putting your energy into this thing and so the actions feel contrived everybody who has done kinhin i suspect has had the experience of almost losing their balance we re doing something so simple and yet it can be hard but there are other days again you don t get a gold star for this when you do kinhin and you find that instead of lifting and moving and lowering and stepping the movement is more like that of a gyroscope at the end of the exhalation when your foot is all the way down but the next foot hasn t yet started to lift you re balanced you re completely balanced you ve found your center of gravity in that moment and sometimes when you start to lift instead of feeling like you re falling to the left it s more like you re turning and as you re turning you can feel yourself moving around this point that you recognize you recognize the point in the middle everything is a kind of dance around that balanced point it feels very very different this is not every day it s also not a sweet spot this is the momentary absence of contraction the way that you find out what it is to push or to pull is not simply to stop i can t say stop pushing and then everyone stops pushing this practice is more subtle than that it s the practice first of noticing what it is to push and noticing what it is to pull zazen is a place to experiment with that but it extends to everything so that when you re in a meeting and you think of the thing that you really want to say but the conversation is still going and you kind of start half listening to what everyone else is saying because now you re rehearsing the thing that you re going to say and then eventually you re barely hearing anything that anyone s saying because now you re looking for your opening to say it you re pulling or you could say that you re pushing some things and pulling others when i tell my children to be patient i really want my children to be patient this is a virtue that i want my children to experience but they re nine and they re seven and they re just not very patient when they re saying can we go can we go can we go can we go in that moment they are not patient that s the reality of that moment this moment is only ever this moment it is never the one that i want it to be it is never the next it s this one and this moment looks exactly like this and it feels exactly like this so when my kids are saying can we go now can we go now can we go now maybe we can t go now but i can respond in one of two basic ways i can say no we can t go right now or i can say you need to be patient work on it in the first there s no push and there s no pull this is just reality the reality is that they want to go and we can t go yet there s no inherent friction there there s no problem in the second i ve identified a problem and have pushed it on to them now we ve completely disregarded the reality of whether we can or can t go right now instead the issue is that they need to change who they are i do this all the time i fall into this all the time you need to stop but when i say you need to stop i m really talking about the future not right now i m trying to bulldoze someone into the next moment or the next moment or the next moment where the situation is different i m not just staying still in the face of what is right now what is right now whether it s a problem or not is what is right now i can t pretend that it s not i can only respond putting aside all concerns shed all attachments do nothing at all this doesn t mean don t respond it doesn t mean be passive it doesn t mean don t try to fix something that s wrong but we only fix things that are wrong fix them in the future things don t get fixed things become the things that they are and we kind of steer them toward eventually being the thing that they are in this moment nothing gets fixed it s impossible because for something to be fixed in this moment is for this moment not to be this moment in this moment you have what s been offered do nothing at all don t fabricate any things with the six senses don t create again because these are instructions for zazen zazen is where we start you sit in zazen and you try to make zazen out of zazen we have this koan the one my teachers returned to more than any other nanyue went to mazu to ask what do you intend by doing zazen mazu said i am intending to be a buddha nanyue picked up a brick and started polishing it mazu said what are you doing nanyue said i am trying to make a mirror mazu said how can you make a mirror by polishing a brick nanyue said how can you become a buddha by doing zazen it s the same thing making zazen and making a buddha are the same thing it s an art project i sit and i fold my legs up just like this and i put my hands just like this and my shoulders are back like this and then eventually my breathing is just like this and then my mind is the mind of zazen sometimes i can do that for a few seconds just at the beginning i can project onto zazen this idea of calm and spaciousness and acceptance and focus when i do that i construct zazen just like i m making a craft with paper and glue t hat is not it they use different language but keizan and dogen are saying the same thing over and over don t measure this don t imagine that there s a platonic ideal of zazen and that you re working toward it throw that out the only zazen is the zazen that s real and the only zazen that s real is the zazen that s happening right now the one that happened last week where it felt really good it s not real and the one that you envision ten years from now after you ve been doing this every day and it s really become a part of yourself also not real the zazen of the person next to you that seems really really solid that person who sits like a rock that s not real there s one zazen that s real and you re in it don t add something to it don t try to shape it don t try to sculpt it don t try to give it a story don t push and don t pull and another thing don t push and don t pull doesn t mean there s a sweet spot it doesn t mean there s this magical place in the middle where you re just in between doing this and doing that don t push and don t pull is wider than that if we imagine there s a sweet spot then we fall into the same trap again and we imagine that every time i m not pushing or pulling it s going to feel just like this but tomorrow not pushing and not pulling feels different and the next day it feels different and the next day it feels different because again that s the only one that s real when you re walking you re doing kinhin that s the only kinhin that s real can you walk forward without pushing try it this has ramifications far beyond sitting or walking share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 7 comments posted in uncategorized you know what you re doing keizan s zazen yōjinki part 1 jul 7 last year i talked at zen nova scotia about keizan jokin s notes on what to be aware of in zazen zazenyōjinki a text i feel an impulse to uphold not just because it s so good but because it s so rarely part of the dialogue around what zazen is or isn t below is a slightly edited version of the first of those talks with a few changes for clarity but all of the rambling quality of how i actually speak my deep thanks to mike landay for so patiently transcribing this talk and all the rest at most temples and centers when we chant the lineage we stop at keizan it s dōgen then koun ejō then tettsu gikai then keizan jōkin the lineage divides in two from there so he s the last ancestor common to us all but the fact is we don t treat him very well we say that there are two founders dōgen and keizan and if you go to a full temple in japan that has all of the statuary and all the stuff there will always be a little statue for each of them if not that at least a little scroll for dōgen and a little scroll for keizan either way they both get to be there but even though we say that keizan is the other founder there s a bias he founded one of the two head monasteries sōjiji and people who train at sōjiji have a very strong feeling about him but for everybody else he s kind of second if that the result is that we tend to overlook what he wrote and what he wrote is remarkable you can t really talk about keizan without talking about dōgen and we know a lot about dōgen because everything in this sōtō zen tradition seems to point straight at him the dōgen of our imagination was very upright and very strict kind of pure he had an idea about bringing back something that was authentic so he developed monastic forms and those forms were very much about moment to moment practice he wasn t so interested in what other people were doing he wasn t so interested in ceremonies or at least not in the kinds of ceremonies that have since become standard in sōtō zen in which people chant and then offer merit that really wasn t his thing his idea of ceremony was that when you brush your teeth you do it just like this after chanting a verse and you hold a cup just like this and you open a door just like this that was his sense of ceremony when he died his whole funeral was that his disciple koun ejō chanted a very short little sutra three times and that was it that was the end...